Employee Charge Rates in AbtracOnLine can be as simple or as flexible as required.
This article explains how to set up default charge rates, multiple rates for employees and how to hide rate details from timesheet users.
Category Archives: Employees
Employee Charge Rates: Specific Rates
Employee Charge Rates in Abtrac can be as simple or as flexible as required.
It’s possible to enter unique charge rates for specific clients, jobs, projects, tasks, stages or activities. These unique rates will override the default charge rate for the specified employees (or in the case of activities the rates will apply for all employees)
Here’s how to ensure you have the right charge rates in the right location for your billing requirements.
There’s a bit of a hierarchy as to which rate is applied when, read on for details.
Scaled Cost Rates
If you are using AbtracOnLine reports for KPI’s it’s possible to balance the reporting of employees working overtime by looking at scaled cost rates.
Scaled cost rates spread an employee cost across their actual hours worked, as opposed to cost rates which work with the required hours for the period.
The following reports in Abtrac include an option for scaled cost rates:
- Invoice Listing
- Invoices vs Time and Disbursements by Project
- Fees & Cost by Employee, Client & Project
Scaled Cost Rates are a modified version of the cost rate. They effectively scale back the cost rate across an excessive number of hours to those specified in an employees required units per timesheet.
Tips for using multiple Offices
From System Management in Abtrac your business details can include information for multiple branches/offices.
These Offices or Branches can also be applied to each employee, job or project and carried through to invoicing and analysis.
You can then run reports by office – comparing performance and profitability between branches and managing workflow.
It’s also useful when you have one tax entity but different physical addresses, and different invoicing and accounting requirements between locations.
There’s also an option to limit access for Abtrac users by office, enabling them to only view and edit offices to which they have been assigned.
When using multiple offices in Abtrac there are a few things to bear in mind.
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Managing access by Employee office
It’s possible to limit access for Abtrac users by office, enabling them to only view and edit offices to which they have been assigned.
We recommend that if you are interested in using this feature that you satisfy yourself that all relevant data in Abtrac has an office assigned.
If you’ve been using multiple offices for some time this shouldn’t be an issue, but if you are new to multiple offices or otherwise wary of data inaccuracies then the Abtrac support team are available for consulting and if required to run scripts against your data to ensure accuracy and a smooth transition.
The process is slightly difference for each version of Abtrac.
Bulk Edit Timesheets
This screen is useful when you need to update timesheet details in bulk, it eliminates the need to open and edit individual users timesheets .
This timesheets maintenance screen is most typically used in the following situations:
- Updating Employee rates
- Editing Stage/Task or Activities that have been incorrectly assigned
- Changing the job code an employee is assigning time to
- To check if/when timesheets have been billed and
- To check which invoice the WIP has been assigned
- To obtain data not available in performance reports for specific employees, in particular to view timesheet data for employees who are no longer current.
Current Employees
AbtracOnLine subscriptions are based on the number of current employees or users. These users are defined as being not only current logins, but the number of current employees being managed through Abtrac, more details are here in our Terms.
You can add or amend users from the administration screen. If your current employees exceed your licensed users in Abtrac you’ll either receive a licensing notification, or hear from the support team directly to adjust your subscription. If you don’t need extra users then you might just need to make some changes to your current employees.
Changing your login and password
AbtracOnLine is only accessible with a current username and password. Your username must be a valid email address and we recommend choosing a secure password (there are tips for secure passwords in this article). Abtrac passwords must be at least 7 characters long, and contain a combination of upper/lower case letters and at least one number.
If you are having problems logging in, if you are starting AbtracOnLine live after a trial, or if you are converting from Abtrac5 you may need to confirm or change your access details.
AbtracOnLine – Log in screen
(If you are looking for help accessing the desktop version follow this link for Abtrac5 access rights and login settings )
Teams or Departments, Which should I use?
In Abtrac both Employees, and Projects can be assigned to a specific Team or Department for reporting purposes. The main difference is…
- A Team is assigned to an Office, and as such can be filtered in reports by office.
- A Department is a stand-alone group that both employees and projects from multiple offices can belong to.
Both groups can be created and maintained from the Administration screens.
Employee Cost Rates
To ensure your profitability reports are as accurate as they can be, it’s a good idea to review your employee cost rates regularly. The new year is as good a time as any to check your management data is up to date.
Ready to Commit Timesheets
By ticking “Ready to Commit” a timesheet user is indicating that they have completed their required hours (and any overtime). It’s also a simple way to confirm that a user has finished entering any comments or disbursements associated with that timesheet period.
Setting up Employees: Part 2 Access rights and login settings
Employee access rights and login settings can be determined from System Management, once password protection is enabled.
There are three levels of access within Abtrac and each can be customised to some extent.
· Administrators
· Standard Users
· Timesheet Users
Setting Up Employees: Part 1 Employee Details
Employee records are stored in the System Management module under System Management > Administrator > Employees.
Here you can store information only accessible to Administrators, including contact details, charge and cost rates. This is also where you assign a timesheet hierarchy and other employee settings. Once you’ve entered Employee Details you’ll then need to set up user rights and log in details from the Edit Users screen.
